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Piracy The Internet United States

US Copyright Office Seeks Input On Mandatory DMCA 'Upload Filters' (torrentfreak.com) 83

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: The U.S. Copyright Office has launched a public consultation to evaluate whether it's wise to make certain technical protection measures mandatory under the DMCA. The Office hopes to hear all relevant stakeholders and the public at large in what may become a de facto review of the recently introduced SMART Copyright Act. [...] Following repeated nudges from Senators Thom Tillis and Patrick Leahy, the Copyright Office started looking into automated tools that online services can use to ensure that pirated content can't be easily reuploaded. This "takedown and staydown' approach relies on technical protection tools, which include upload filters. This is a sensitive subject that previously generated quite a bit of pushback when the EU drafted its Copyright Directive. To gauge the various options and viewpoints, the Copyright Office launched a consultation last year, which triggered a wave of objections and opposition.

Last week, the Office followed up with yet another consultation, asking for input on shortcomings in the current DMCA legislation and what alternatives could help to improve things. As things stand, online services are allowed to implement their own upload filters, which many do. Scanning uploads for potentially copyright-infringing content isn't mandatory but that could change in the future. The consultation outline mentions several potential changes to the DMCA's Section 512, such as online services losing their safe harbor protection if they fail to implement specific "standard technical measures" (STMs). "Is the loss of the section 512 safe harbors an appropriate remedy for interfering with or failing to accommodate STMs?" the Copyright Office asks. "Are there other obligations concerning STMs that ought to be required of internet service providers?" the list of questions continues.

Stakeholders are asked to share their views on these matters. While it is uncertain whether any measures will be made mandatory, the Copyright Office is already looking ahead. For example, who gets to decide what STMs will be mandatory, and how would the rulemaking process work? "What entity or entities would be best positioned to administer such a rulemaking? What should be the frequency of such a rulemaking? What would be the benefits of such a rulemaking? What would be the drawbacks of such a rulemaking?"

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US Copyright Office Seeks Input On Mandatory DMCA 'Upload Filters'

Comments Filter:
  • well there may be BIG 1st issues with it. Also needs an way for an manual review and ways for an court to flag an video as (NO TAKE DOWN)

    • by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @09:28AM (#62519150) Journal

      The copyright office may not have thought about a "don't take down" database / flag. That's the kind of thing that's useful to bring up during the comment period. I encou
      https://www.copyright.gov/poli... [copyright.gov]

      • by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @09:39AM (#62519178) Journal

        I accidentally clicked submit while typing with both thumbs.
        I encourage you to flesh out that idea and submit it as a comment.

        Some of my comments have been integrated into federal regulations. The key is to understand what the comment period is for. It's for pointing out something the agency may not have been aware of or an idea that may not have thought of, or might have misunderstood. It's NOT American Idol voting!

        They may not have thought to require or encourage technical measures to define how they address "do not block", such as for proven fair use or other proven incorrect copyright claims. That's something that may be worth pointing out in a comment. I provided the link above.

        For readers who do not have anything new to say, please do not use that link to spam a bunch of "I hate copyright" shit, without even reading the proposal. All that does is drown out the useful comments like the need for a "don't block, fair use" function. This comment period is NOT about whether you think copyright is a good idea. They aren't getting rid of copyright. It's not about whether or not you like whatever you think DMCA says. The person reading these comments can not get rid the statute. They CAN apply your ideas to the very specific regulations that are discussed in this proposal. They'll do so if they are persuaded by your comment pointing out something they hadn't thought of before in the year(s) they spent researching the issues around this proposal.

        .

    • by skam240 ( 789197 )

      You only use the word "an" before a word that begins with a vowel, otherwise it's "a".

    • The cartels are fine without such unnecessary "innovation."

      The whole point is: "If we don't make money off of it, it doesn't exist."
    • by nagora ( 177841 )

      well there may be BIG 1st issues with it.

      Name one.

  • by gillbates ( 106458 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @09:11AM (#62519108) Homepage Journal

    A technical measure that restricted uploads would be a great way to ensure that non-licensed, non-corporate, non-copyright-registered media cannot be uploaded at all.

    Established players, who can afford the copyright registration fees for everything they produce would be minimally affected. But independent artists, musicians, videographers, photographers, playrights, and authors would effectively be silenced and shut out. Which is half of the intended effect - to return control over all media production and distribution to the large corporate players.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @09:33AM (#62519168) Homepage Journal

      The EU version only applies to larger sites, and has strong protections e.g. self declared fair use. It seems like a reasonably balance, blocking blatant piracy and illegal imagery (child abuse, revenge porn etc.) while erring on the site of the uploader and requiring fair use to override filters.

      • by splutty ( 43475 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @09:42AM (#62519186)

        Maybe I'm too cynical, but the fact the EU version has reasonable protection for fair use almost guarantees the US version won't have that..

      • by gillbates ( 106458 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @09:58AM (#62519232) Homepage Journal

        Witness what happened with YouTube where, in order to comply with a "Protect the children" law, comic artists disabled comments on all of their content because they feared a judge could consider it targeted toward children, and therefore trigger the law.

        The issue is that even creators of original content could find themselves shut out by this. Look at how YouTube treats Rick Beato's videos. He's not making any money from his channel, so he doesn't bother fighting the copyright claims, even though he's been advised by lawyers that it's fair use. Very often, the threat of legal problems is enough to prevent online activity in the first place. And this is the kind of cultural exchange we want on the internet.

        • by rnturn ( 11092 )

          ``The issue is that even creators of original content could find themselves shut out by this. Look at how YouTube treats Rick Beato's videos. He's not making any money from his channel, so he doesn't bother fighting the copyright claims, even though he's been advised by lawyers that it's fair use.''

          Rick Beato's video and music snippets are, of course, fair use. No artist loses anything from his playing a few seconds of a song while reviewing (his song dissections are great, BTW). Recording industry lawyer

        • Look at how YouTube treats Rick Beato's videos. He's not making any money from his channel, so he doesn't bother fighting the copyright claims,

          Is there a way to fight the copyright claims on Youtube?

          Last I heard there's absolutely no way to appeal a takedown or even get a human involved in the loop.

          • Last I heard there's absolutely no way to appeal a takedown or even get a human involved in the loop.

            Which is by design. Human beings have subjective judgement which could cost the company money. Also, humans making decisions costs a lot more than algorithms making decisions.

            Ted Kaczinsky warned of a future in which humans would be controlled by computers, where a human being would be subject to rules imposed by computers, from which no appeal to a human being was possible. We're there. Had Ted h

        • Absolutely spot on. I've been watching another YouTuber Angry Joe getting his Halo TV series videos struck down by CBS claiming DMCA, all because they don't like some of the negative response to the show (The Kwon Show!). Joe even tried various forms of altering the used footage and heavily reduced the amount of footage shown and is still getting manual copyright claims against his vids. There needs to be an improved mechanism to prevent false copyright claims when fair use is clear. Corporations shouldn'
    • an copyright renewal fee is an good way to fix abandonware.
      What your media on this system then there is an fee to keep it there and if you don't pay then it's becomes an pubic work.

    • A technical measure that restricted uploads would be a great way to ensure that non-licensed, non-corporate, non-copyright-registered media cannot be uploaded at all.

      A government mandated technical measure that restricts some types of speech smacks of prior restraint. It's evidently not enough that copyright already infringes on the 1A, now they are proposing to make the amendment even more irrelevant.

  • Can they guarentee that this filters will be fair use friendly and not randomly block stuff from being uploaded? No? yea didn't think so you know what you can do with these filters.
  • The U.S. Copyright Office has launched a public consultation to evaluate whether it's wise to make certain technical protection measures mandatory under the DMCA. The Office hopes to hear all relevant stakeholders

    I searched the docket number on regulations.gov and it's not even fucking there. If they hope to hear from anyone they're going to have to do their fucking jobs and get it up on the website where they say you have to submit all comments.

    • Re:ha ha no (Score:5, Insightful)

      by waspleg ( 316038 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @09:21AM (#62519126) Journal

      Sounds like they just want the appearance of feedback for the appearance of an open process without one. You know, like net neutrality.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by raymorris ( 2726007 )

      Do you have a comment pointing out something they may not have thought about relating to the proposed implementation of this regulation? If so you can post it here and I'll copy / paste it to the appropriate person.

      If your comment consists only of "fucking fuck do their fucking jobs", that's just garbage obscuring the useful comments that can actually improve things. Don't fucking bother.

    • by sjames ( 1099 )

      Well, they tried to upload it, but it tripped some copyright tilt switch somewhere and got banned for infringement...

  • by Revek ( 133289 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @09:21AM (#62519128)
    If they make the consequence for false claims equal the consequences of an actual infringement we might get a more balanced law. Right now false claims face no fine or any other negative consequences.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I like the EU's proposed solution to this. The uploader can declare that the copyrighted material used in their video is fair use. To challenge it the copyright holder must have a human being review it and swear that they think it isn't fair use.

      They should go further though. Establish a Copyright Small Claims Court. The cost the uploader would be minimal, and everything would be done online.

      • That's similar to what is already in the DMCA. The problem is most people can't afford to go to court, so they don't challenge the human reviewer.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @11:00AM (#62519408) Homepage Journal

          The flaw in the DMCA is that it doesn't require a legal declaration that the work is infringing, only that the person submitting the DMCA notice is the copyright holder. So there are no consequences for wrongly flagging stuff. Under the EU scheme, there is a legal declaration that the work has been reviewed and found infringing and not fair use, which creates a legal liability if they are mistaken.

          It also bans automated systems issuing claims without any human oversight.

          • The flaw in the DMCA is that it doesn't require...

            It's not a flaw, it's a feature.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Lonewolf666 ( 259450 )

            Wrongly flagging stuff needs to lead to statutory damages the uploader can demand, on a similar level to those for copyright infringement.

            Statutory because sometimes the monetary damage is negligible, but the content deserves protection as free speech. So put a serious price tag on malicious or careless claims that a work is infringing. And no extra leeway for those using automated systems issuing claims. Your computer files 1000 false claims, you are liable for 1000 times the damage of a single false claim

  • by 91degrees ( 207121 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @09:27AM (#62519148) Journal
    Already automated systems frequently take down non-infringing works, which is, even if the system works perfectly, an inconvenience to resolve.

    Upload filters simply can't work. There's no way to determine what is and isn't an infringing copy. It's technically possible to determine if something is copyrighted, I guess, if there's a large enough library. But is it fair use? Does the user have permission from the copyright holder? Does the party claiming copyright actually hold the copyright? Filters can't decide this.
    • by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @10:05AM (#62519252)

      Exactly this. The church I’m at licenses the music it uses in its services each week from the CCLI licensing body (or else uses hymns and the like that are in the public domain). The license covers live “performances”, and we have an extension to the license to cover the streaming and subsequent uploading of those “performances”. If an automatic filter was in place, how would YouTube or whoever know that we had that license? Is the CCLI supposed to make an API available so that YouTube could validate our claims to have a license? What about churches that write their own music, of which there are many? Are they now legally required to establish a personal licensing body and stand up a server to validate that they own their own music?

      Where’s the presumption of innocence?

      It’s fine for platforms to make it easier to identify infringement, but the onus should be on the rights holder to assert infringement, rather than having platforms acting as gatekeepers for the lawful expression of free speech.

      • by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

        If an automatic filter was in place, how would YouTube or whoever know that we had that license?

        Presumably in exactly the same way that existing DMCA works - you receive a takedown notice, and then you file a counterclaim that what you have is actually allowed up there. YouTube or whoever will know that you had a license simply because you claimed you did. (as per DMCA, your claim is made under penalty of perjury, which is why you'll strive to avoid making false claims).

        What about churches that write their own music, of which there are many? Are they now legally required to establish a personal licensing body and stand up a server to validate that they own their own music?

        It sounds like you're imagining a "allow-only-permitted-stuff-through" filter. That conceptually doesn't even make sense. The only wa

        • In practice, YouTube automatically denies appeals then simply asks the complainant if they're sure, which is also an automated 'yes' response. After that you're SOL unless you can get someone with enough influence on social media to post about it for their PR department to get wind. No penalty for perjury has ever been enforced, and 99% of people can't afford to pay a lawyer to fight it anyway (and they won't take near certain odds of loss on contingency).
      • Where’s the presumption of innocence?

        In the same place they put the other so called rights: In the trash with the others.

        Buckle up people, the masters of the world are here to deny you access to information, and the general public is too busy fighting amongst each other to be wary of them.

    • by sjames ( 1099 )

      I'm not so sure it IS possible to automatically detect copyrighted works reliably:

      For the sake of argument, this sentence is copyrighted.

      F0r the sake of argument, this sentence is copyrighted.

      For the sake of 4rgument, this sentence is copyrighted.

      For the sake of argument. this sentence is copyrighted,

      Copyrighted this sentence is, for the sake of argument.

      Some idiot thinks this sentence is copyrighted.

      Now, what is the algorithm that reliably flags the 2nd-4th as violations but doesn't mis-classify the 5th or

  • publish the encrypted video to one website and the key to decrypt it to another
  • Small businesses (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Matt321 ( 9371829 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @09:39AM (#62519180)
    Scanning for DMCA is not trivial and will be a huge barrier to entry for a smaller firm
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      While true, there is already a similar huge barrier: illegal material and trolling. Any platform that wants to enter the market needs to avoid becoming a haven for child porn and trolls.

      It's surprisingly hard too. Meta/Facebook have practically infinite resources to throw at the problem, but the Metaverse is full of adults trying to abuse children: https://www.theguardian.com/tv... [theguardian.com]

      If you are in the UK and can watch the documentary, the video of what it's like inside the Metaverse is pretty shocking.

      • Well, it takes multi trillion dollar governments and a century of social engineering to convince people that just because she old enough to have a kid, doesn't mean she's old enough to have a kid.
    • by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      Scanning for DMCA is not trivial and will be a huge barrier to entry for a smaller firm

      Why is it not trivial? One realization is that, say, the copyright office provides a file updated daily which contains MD5 hashes of proscribed material, the small business downloads that file at least once a week, and compares the MD5 of uploaded content against that file. Another realization is that the small business sends the MD5 hash to a server provided by the copyright office.

      You might object that these realizations won't catch *all* copyright material. That's an unreasonable goal. Indeed even the ma

      • You could also argue that it won't catch ANY. An MD5 hash of one particular encoding of a file? Just editing one byte of the metadata or trimming a single frame of video would give you a different hash. That would stop uploads of unmodified full stream rips from a streaming platform but literally nothing else. I don't even think that happens. Sites are already doing far better than that now.

        • by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

          You could also argue that it won't catch ANY... Sites are already doing far better than that now.

          Agreed. So it's in negotiation phase. Some proposals say that sites should use "industry best practices". Then it becomes a negotiation about what is considered best practice and feasible enough, and the onus is on the copyright industry to put forwards technically feasible solutions.

    • by drhamad ( 868567 )
      Wouldn't this actually help level the field? It'd make what needs to be done very straightforward - install this software and you're [at least closer to] OK, rather than having huge liability risks and inconsistent rules.
  • What the public believes doesn't matter. As long as the voting public chooses candidates based on who has the best advertisements and does the most fun rallies and who pushes their buttons the best rather than based on policy that affects their economic lives and politicians are going to cater to large corporations and not to voters.

    Americans need to form voting blocks based on our economic interests instead of on social issues and pet peeves.
    • What the public believes doesn't matter. As long as the voting public chooses candidates based on who has the best advertisements and does the most fun rallies and who pushes their buttons the best rather than based on policy that affects their economic lives and politicians are going to cater to large corporations and not to voters.

      Americans need to form voting blocks based on our economic interests instead of on social issues and pet peeves.

      There used to be voting blocs based on economic interest. They were called "states".
      That approach became attached to some ugly stuff, and roughly a century was spent dissolving its coherence and power.

      That dissolution also completely destroyed national discourse and debate. Without discrete, coherent, locally-governed groups there's no possibility of real discussion or negotiation, because you have no way to identify the stakeholders and gather them at the table. All you can do is send out a mass survey to

    • [Problem statement]

      So far, so good...

      Americans need to form voting blocks based on our economic interests instead of on social issues and pet peeves.

      After which the Republic collapses into bread-and-circuses looting.

      (Just as the Europeans thought republics and democracies always did - so monarchies or other elitist systems were required - before contact with the Iroquois Federation gave the US Founders a proof-of-concept sample of how it COULD work.)

      Agreed that US voters are often led into voting against th

  • by e**(i pi)-1 ( 462311 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @09:56AM (#62519218) Homepage Journal
    yes, this very much looks like an attempt to have more control. copy right is an excuse to filter information traffic. Once the technology is in place, it can be used for other purposes like ``to curb disinformation" or to ``stop fake news". The next step will be to implement the filters client side. At the moment we still have a relatively decent democracy but it needs only a war or serious economic down-turn and also the US could slip into tyranny. The US constitution has implemented some wise breaks too prevent such things to happen like the fourth amendment that protects people from "unreasonable searches and seizures by the government". Imposing filters of any kind controlled by opaque entities and algorithms also opens the door for future unreasonable search. Assume for example that an upload filter detects copy righted content automatically alerts law enforcement? Or assume that the algorithm decides that some information is disinformation?
  • by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @09:56AM (#62519220) Homepage

    Seems fine, as long as there are serious penalties for flagging material incorrectly, and those penalties are enforced.

    If it's a one-off accident, then they pay the a fine to whoever they falsely flagged. Repeat offenders can be presumed to be doing it intentionally, and the individuals should be charged with something like fraud.

    Put all that in place, starting now with DMCA notices. Then we can talk.

  • 5 minutes later, I suspect the response from the pirate community will just be to encrypt uploads with something as simple as a password-protected zip, then release the key after the upload is available.
    • 5 minutes later, I suspect the response from the pirate community will just be to encrypt uploads with something as simple as a password-protected zip, then release the key after the upload is available.

      Thus giving the bastards an excuse to have another ill-fated, doomed-to-failure go at banning encryption, or prohibiting public upload of encrypted content, or some such ridiculousness.

      • by PPH ( 736903 )

        prohibiting public upload of encrypted content

        How do you know it's encrypted content? And not the latest Word document format.

        • You don't, reliably, hence ill-fated. Though, at present, the tendency is to wrap encrypted content in a package with easily detected headers. Posting a raw stream with no headers, using an agreed-upon algorithm, would be much harder to detect. The most likely attempt would be by measuring the randomness of the content and arbitrarily defining anything over a threshold without specific ID data as "encrypted," and then we'll get inefficient steganography. The whole concept is stupid, but that's never sto

  • by thomst ( 1640045 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @10:09AM (#62519262) Homepage

    I went to https://www.copyright.gov/poli... [copyright.gov] to submit the following comment:

    ,p>I am a private stakeholder, who holds or co-holds more than two dozen copyrights on recorded music of my own composition or co-composition, as well as more than 100 copyrights on textual material of which I am the author. I strongly advise against the use of automated filters to take down material claimed to be infringing under the DMCA and followon legislation. As currently implemented by major online video sites (e.g. - YouTube), they identify as infringing material that is either not the property of the complainant(s), or that the use of which is protected by fair use provisions of the existing Copyright Act. Worse still, the process for appealing such automated takedowns is unobvious, non-transparent, and is itself too often exclusively automated, with no actual human involved in deciding the merits of the appeal. This proposal would enshrine this broken system, to the detriment of the general public. In addition, undeserved DMCA "strikes" can result in uploaders who have not actually infringed the DMCA's provisions being permanently barred from uploading their own, unique, non-infringing material, with no effective avenue of appeal. This is both fundamentally unfair and antithetical to the intent of the DMCA and U.S. copyright law.

    When I clicked the submit button, I immediately wound up at https://www.regulations.gov/co... [regulations.gov] - which says that comments are not currently being accepted on this proposed rule.

    Evidently the public participation part of this proposed rulemaking is currently as broken as the automated takedown systems already in use.

    The irony is so thick you could cut it with a spoon ...

    • The link you posted allowed me to submit a comment about 3 hours after you posted it. Not sure if this was because the comments are just now opening or if they're receiving lots of comments.

      I'd say try to post your comment, history has indicated that however polite the people are, the lobbyists will come up with some nonsense reason why the public comments should be disregarded.

  • The expense of technical implementation would stand to be insane. Copyrighted works are increasing by hundreds of thousands weekly. With sampling, licenses, limited clearances and the likes, the number of false positives would create endless nuisance, and people who are determined to upload something will find a way to easily do it in an encrypted and containerized manner which will evade any such detection all the same.

    What's truly nightmarish is that this feels like The Ghost Of Hillary Rosen in cluele
  • ... don't want to have to look at everything on the Internet and want web sites that accept uploads to do their work for them? Boo effin' hoo.

    "Hey there, web sites! Defend our copyrights for us!"

  • My computer is not an Airport. I can have goods or things on there *MERCHANTS* don't like.

    A lot of border protection stuff is actually about protection of MERCHANTS. My favorite is the supposed agriculture protection where they stop all sorts of food or imported goods under the guise that people are bringing over mass plague crop-ruining invaders. Actually this is funny if you think about it because drug shipments make it past the border all the time and they admit it! So if they aren't stopping 100% of the

    • Many of your points about the regime being primarily about protecting the interests of certain big businesses against small-operator competition and individual customer escape from their rakeoff-seeking tollbooth are valid. But:

      My favorite is the supposed agriculture protection where they stop all sorts of food or imported goods under the guise that people are bringing over mass plague crop-ruining invaders. Actually this is funny if you think about it because drug shipments make it past the border all the

  • How would movie or game reviews take place?
    How would people respond to their politicians?
  • Enshrining in law that bad faith takedowns get companies blacklisted permanently from submitting DMCA takedowns. Kind of like how CBS is doing to bad reviews of Halo by submitting a "manual review" which includes FIVE SECONDS of copyrighted content used for the purposes of reviews.

  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @10:55AM (#62519388)

    Right now, frivolous takedown-notices by copyright owners to squelch criticism of their crappy products are already running rampart around YouTube. With crap like that, anyone who actually wants to do any kind of criticism of copyrighted material (read: wants to do a review of yet another movie that carpet bombs diarrhea all over a franchise) will be silenced even faster.

  • by rcb1974 ( 654474 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @11:09AM (#62519454) Homepage
    All this will do is create more barriers to entry for startup platforms since it increases their cost to comply with the law. Fewer platforms means less competition and a strengthening of existing monopolies. Also, most of the content put out these days by mainstream media sources like Hollywood, Disney, the RIAA, etc is such trash/smut that it isn't even worth the price of the disk space used to store it. Yet another law that just hurts business and does nothing to stop "piracy" (i.e. unwanted copy/paste).
  • ... The Office hopes to hear all relevant stakeholders and the public at large in what may become a de facto review of the recently introduced SMART Copyright Act.

    That's funny. We all know the weasels in congress will vote for whoever lines their pockets. Big media companies can collectively afford to donate billions.



    boy am i in a negative mood today

  • by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @11:29AM (#62519526) Journal

    An internet where the speech that you upload can be filtered and controlled can certainly be an internet where the files you upload can be filtered and controlled.

    After all, it's for the children ... or for the protected minority of the month ... or for the "fortified" election, or ...

    • Yep, thought the same thing. If you want to demand that certain sites, I wOnDeR wHiCh HmMmM!??!?, be banned from existence. You shouldn't be surprised when the enforcers decide to expand the banning in whatever ways they want. They always do.

      For all of you who said: "They don't have to provide you a platform." You were also declaring: "I don't need the ability to speak."
  • by sheph ( 955019 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @11:37AM (#62519544)
    I'm immediately thinking about how this might be misused. If the mechanism exists to suppress content what happens when they don't like what you're saying. Already they label things as misinformation that offer an alternative viewpoint to the mainstream narrative. It seems like this could quickly slide into groupthink and thought control. It's been my experience that there are always motives beyond the stated purpose when it comes to things like this.
  • If this USCO is anything like the BATFE there will be thousands of comments against the proposal and then they will ignore them and plow through whichever way the politicos and big money want them to go with it.

  • Who cares, since no one is ever held to account for false take downs. This is just the copyright cartel pushing their owned politicians and bureaucrats to act for their benefit and profit. When you own someone they jump to your demands.
  • by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2022 @04:30PM (#62520710) Homepage

    Scanning uploads for potentially copyright-infringing content...

    There is no such thing as copyright-infringing content. The entertainment has corrupted the words and concepts we are using. Repeat after me folks: "There is no such thing as infringing content." Let me explain:

    If I own a copy of a movie, and I choose to upload it to my private YouTube channel so that I can stream it back to my phone, then there is no copyright infringement because I am permitted to time and format shift my content. If I then watch the movie from my neighbor's wifi, no copyright infringement has happened. I watched my copy of my movie. But if I give my neighbor the link and *they* stream the movie, then copyright infringement has happened.

    There is no technological measure that can determine if a copyright has been infringed. The only thing these automated systems can do is say "This content is copyrighted." But it has no way to ask the copyright holder: "Is this okay?" It does not have a way to ask the person uploading it or downloading it "Are you complying with the copyright?"

    So what we are moving toward is that every hard drive has to somehow police the data and ask "Am I the copyright holder of this?" If the answer is no, it assumes that the person uploading it is committing piracy so they block it. But that's not copyright protection! And as more and more storage goes into the cloud, this problem gets worse. If I download a movie from Netflix, where can I even put it? Can I put it on my phone? A NAS? Can I mirror that to my OneDrive? Can I mirror it to dropbox? Can I upload it to a service that burns it onto a DVD? Microsoft and DropBox and the DVD service don't know the answer to that question, because they don't know if I'm keeping the file for myself or if I'm going to make 100 copies and sell them on the street corner.

    The only logical thing such a filter can do is ask *me* if I'm infringing. Only I know.

    The very fundamental concept of an upload or download filter is inherently flawed. But the industry has corrupted and confused what copyright even is, so much so that even the savvy among us fall into the trap of "infringing content" and just assume that "oh, you can't upload that, it's copyrighted." That's wrong.

  • Do they know that there's no need to "upload" files to the interwebs pipes in order to infringe copyright? There's this thing called peer-to-peer file sharing & there's not much they can do to stop it. Mandating automated filtering will just exponentially increase the number of false positives like what's already happening on Youtube. Actually, maybe that's not such a bad thing. Perhaps that'll encourage people & organisations to seek better media hosting solutions/services instead of relying on com
  • The difference between you uploading a movie and streaming a video feed of the camera by your doorbell?

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